Oh, you want a work around? Other than the two super awesome above? Yeah, sure.. merely install software you really don’t want: media server THAT plays well with rebaged junk.

Western Digital TV Live Plus HD is pointless pain. If you’re the idiot at which it was targeted you are likely blissfully pleased with it.

Until the firmware allows one to specify the UNC path for shares this gizmo is dead opposite convenient. shipping firmware 1.03.26_B (the B and functionality suggests beta) but as shipped firmware ‘by definition’ is no longer beta let’s call it beta_plus.

Western Digital TV Live Plus HD failures:

cannot specify network share UNC path

idiotic reliance on Master Browser

NOT dlna certified

GUI during video playback is poorly conceived, time consuming to navigate, and less than informative

file deletion cannot be accomplished via the playback interface, but only the file management setup in options

‘less complicated’ remote is less than useful further requiring fighting more gui levels

because of its inanely small size it is difficult for many to identify that maximum fastness has been achieved .. because the IR remote is less than satisfactory about a third of the time the command never reaches the box [unobstructed 10 foot corridor]

16x is not fast enough. Re-transcoding to increase I-frames while not sensible is briefly tempting

no obvious way to spoke a video to a specific time. Want to begin watching at 1:02:19 ? Too bad. Enjoy the fast forward “speed”

before I return it I hope to confirm that it chokes on 1080p high bandwidth videos since in their brilliance it does not sport gigabit ethernet

I’ve already been burned by Netflix bait-and-switch “all the movies you want”

netflix motto is actually “all the movies WE want YOU TO RECEIVE”

$9/mo netflix for nowhere near a reasonable number of movies I want

I certainly don’t want any in shoddy transcode streams

For $8/mo I can access the storage array that predates the interweb and gopher

no conspiracy actual months of testing to confirm — especially entertaining is loading one movie return envelope with multiple movies and watching how ‘slowly’ each ‘arrives’ in the warehouse… variably hmmmm

boot times? there are no moving parts. why does booting take so long??

USB is a thought step in the right direction for the low end market. No esata? fail

no forward thinking USB3? the cart must lead the donkey to UFD

boxee box also fails to offer esata

I haven’t bothered playing with the music features. I don’t want to be disappointed again.

on a side note: why do home NAS boxen not FULLY implement Sata?? DIY sata nas to achieve port multiplication (scsi daisy chain spill over) .. but no commercial embrace of port multiplier in home gear? fail!

It was not a plus that amazon fulfillment did not bother to pad the shipping box. Since boxes tumble all six faces must have padding.. duh?

September 22, 2010

The only care i would consider is the Eye-Fi PRO X2 as I want ad hoc. Eye-Fi has crammed in some wifi goodness into the vast emptiness of an SDHC card. It’s another kind of “unlimited” storage, but at the obvious expensive of device battery life. It supports all those great AP crypto schemes almost.. but there are some questions I haven’t seen asked, and when asked by myself or others in RL or net peer groups an eerie NON-responsiveness from the EyeFi hoard. :[

raid in one plastic box? you already make creative use of the empty space, let’s be sure there are no foobared photos.

android application?

Sure, the droid, 2, x, its kin, and other AOSP have needlessly expensive wifi hotspot but I would much rather push camera, audio, video over the handset to stay inside the “unlimited” flavor of data. Let’s not route through the dee ewe en host, alright?